“Nae.” He traced her features with his smoldering gaze, then drew his fingers over her parted lips. “Ye’re mine and ye’ll be stayin’ with me.”
“But I worry for my—”
“Katie?”
“Aye?” She smiled at the sound of her name spoken so sweetly from his lips.
“Ye talk too much, lass.” He devoured her mouth, capturing anything further she wished to say while his hands slid down her back and over her soft buttocks.
Chapter Thirty-One
THEY RODE BACK to Camlochlin with Kate comfortably nestled between Callum’s thighs. They did not ride on the wind, but he kept his mount at a slow trot, enjoying the feel of her against his heart. It had been a long, torturous eternity since he held anyone so close to that sacred place. When he had told her he would die clutching a Campbell heart in his hands, he truly had no idea that heart would be hers. He had not been prepared, and doubted he ever would have been, to hand his heart over to her in return. Aye, he had tried to make her loathe him in order to save her life. For her life meant more to him than his home, his kin, his name. He had no doubt he would give up all for her. But ’twas his soul he had been trying to protect, also. He had lost it once because he loved. To lose it again terrified him.
Losing Kate terrified him even more.
Along the coastline on which they traveled, frothy whitecaps crashed in a rolling crescendo against the low, jagged cliffs, launching sea spray twenty feet into the air. Kate watched it, thinking how very much Callum was like the ocean, all turbulent and raging and powerful. She clutched his hand at her belly and leaned her head back against his chest, enjoying the wonderment of the day. The rains had ended and the sun shone like an orb of fire in the pale sky, but a brisk chill remained in the air, making everything smell clean and crisp and new.
A new day. Callum enfolded her deeper into his embrace and bent his face to the crook of her neck. He kissed her curls. She heard him inhale deeply, and the brawn of his body surged up against her like the waves to her left.
Kate sighed softly on an exhilarated breath. Her eyes slid to the east, where the forest had just begun to fall away in place of fallow fields where woolly cattle grazed with sluggish indifference on overgrown grass. Before her, the Cuillins rose up—a stone behemoth shielding its children beneath its vast black wings. A mist rolled over the sharp peaks and drifted downward toward the earth like a gossamer avalanche. Everywhere Kate looked she beheld power and beauty, land so achingly feral and beautiful it was almost painful for a mere mortal to gaze upon it overlong. Skies so vast she had the urge to spread her arms and bask in the freedom flying would bring. The Highlands and the people who inhabited them belonged to each other. Never was it clearer to Kate. She doubted one could survive without the other and wondered at the same time if this untamed land compelled its people to fight against attempts to subdue them, or if the people’s untamed will and stubborn resilience made the land so wildly breathtaking.
“Will we have children together, Callum?” she asked wistfully, suddenly wanting to bear all his bairns here.
“Aye. I want many sons.”
She turned to give him a haughty look. “Think you, you would allow me to bear some daughters?”
Humor fanned the flames of his eyes. “I would allow it only after a son.”
“Humph.” Kate swung around to conceal her smile, only to quiver in his arms a moment later when he parted the curls at her nape and spread his hot breath there.
“We could stop right here and continue our effort to make one.”
“I think not,” she said. “We are not even wed. And now that you mention it, I remember hearing Aileen and some of the other women talking at the castle, and they said that if a man wishes to have a son, he and his wife must wait until the waxing of the full moon. I think that is . . .” She counted on her fingers, then nodded. “Aye. A fortnight away.”
Callum’s head snapped up from its thorough ravishing of her neck, and he glowered at her raven curls. “I willna be denied fer a full bloody fortnight, Kate.”
“Och, but ye will, Callum MacGregor.” She imitated his thick Highland burr.
“Are ye makin’ sport of my speech, woman?” he asked, sincerely surprised that she would do so.
She laughed, a rich, beautiful sound. “I find your speech quite enchanting.”
Appeased, he allowed himself a smile. “There’s much to learn aboot the MacGregors.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the men, especially the laird, will no’ be blackmailed.” He yanked his plaid over his hard cock and, dropping the reins, curled one arm around her waist and lifted her gown over her hips with the other. He slipped his hand over her throat and pulled her close to rake his teeth across her skin. “I’ve wanted to take ye like this fer too long now,” he whispered huskily in her ear, then lifted her enough to thrust his silken lance deep within her without breaking stride.
His big hands on her hips guided her up and down on his steel shaft, making her feel every inch. His low groans along her flesh sent flames up her spine. When Kate looped her arms around his neck behind her, he shoved her down hard, then swept his palm over her belly and lifted her again. He dipped his fingers to her swollen bud and stroked her until she pitched against his chest.
“I say son.” He smiled into her nape and lurched upward. “What say you, Katie?”
“Twins,” she bargained and then laughed with him. He grew serious an instant later when he whispered how he felt inside her. Then he showed her by cupping her from front to back in his hands and sliding her up, almost over his thick, sensitive head, then back down to his hilt.
To say that he was gentle in his lovemaking this time would be sheer folly on Kate’s part. Her breasts ached, her neck felt delightfully bruised by his wicked teeth, and the backs of her thighs would surely bear the truth of his passion before the day’s end.
Sometime later, when his four most loyal warriors came upon them just before they reached the crest of Camlochlin’s glen, Kate’s hair looked as if she had been caught in a violent Highland storm, her cheeks were flushed, and her gown twisted almost backward on her shoulders.
